Posted on 12/06/2010 5:16:24 AM PST by Abathar
Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents are about 40 percent more likely than other teens to be punished by school authorities, police and the courts, according to a study by Yale University researchers. Published in the January 2011 issue of the journal Pediatrics, the study is the first to document excessive punishment of LGB youth nationwide.
"We found that virtually all types of punishmentincluding school expulsions, arrests, juvenile convictions, adult convictions and especially police stopswere more frequently meted out to LGB youth," said lead author Kathryn Himmelstein, who initiated the study while she was a Yale undergraduate. The research was supervised by Hannah Brueckner, professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course at Yale.
The study was based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and included about 15,000 middle and high school students who were followed for seven years into early adulthood. The study collected details on participants' sexuality, including feelings of sexual attraction, sexual relationships and self-labeling as LGB. Add Health also surveyed participants about how frequently they engaged in a variety of misbehaviors, ranging in severity from lying to parents, to using a weapon. Add Health included detailed questions about school expulsions and contacts with the criminal justice system.
Himmelstein, who now teaches math at a public high school in New York City, said that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB were about 50 percent more likely to be stopped by police than other teenagers. Teens who reported feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, regardless of their self-identification, were more likely than other teens to be expelled from school or convicted of crimes as adults.
"Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual were especially at risk for unequal treatment," said Himmelstein. "They reported experiencing twice as many police stops, arrests and convictions as other girls who had engaged in similar behavior. Although we did not explore the experiences of transgender youth, anecdotal reports suggest that they are similarly at risk for excessive punishment."
The study showed that these disparities in punishments are not explained by differences in the rates of misbehavior. In fact, the study showed that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB actually engaged in less violence than their peers.
"The painful, even lethal bullying that LGB youth suffer at the hands of their peers has been highlighted by recent tragic events," Himmelstein notes. "Our numbers suggest that school officials, police and judges, who should be protecting LGB youth, are instead singling them out for punishment based on their sexual orientation. LGB teens can't thrive if adults single them out for punishment because of their sexual orientation."
Brueckner added, "The study provides the first and only national estimates for over-representation of LGB youth in the criminal justice system. We simply did not have any good numbers on this before. We need more research on the processes that lead to this to help us identify ways to make our institutions more equitable with respect to policing all youth, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation."
Citation: Pediatrics Vol. 127, 1 (January 1, 2011)
Could it also be that the people who identify themselves as LBGA are 40% more likely to be doing things that are punishable?
Why is it that we are not even looking at that?
Perhaps we should be looking at the possibility that they are causing trouble and now they want to blame somebody else for their problems?
School is terrible for LBGTQ youth. Every single one of them should insist that their parents send them to a private LBGTQ school or homeschool them.
Simple solution.....
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Then they will go on the record for just being you-know-what disturbers.
Good to see a balanced point of view in this debate.
Latent weediness do not constitute membership of an oppressed minority. But I bet if the same question was asked to weedy spectacle-wearing geeks who can’t run and can’t kick a ball straight, they’d come up with the exact same answer the gays have.
I got wailed on for about three years by a bunch of sixth formers who were all “Sport Billys” (jocks, you guys call ‘em).
My particular reason for being a target was on account of being a small, weedy kid with a heart problem who couldn’t run fast, and also had the misfortune of being blind in one eye and having to wear glasses.
Once they know they can get you from one side and you can’t run faster than them, your only hope is that the wind is blowing in the right direction and you get a fair warning.
One of our sports teachers would regularly put “weedy” kids like me in detention just for answering back or not running fast enough (he sent one kid to run round the pitch six times for “not trying hard enough” despite the kid being in calipers!), but he would walk past the Sports Billy cretins while they were beating up on a kid half their size and say nothing.
As far as he was concerned anyone in the school rugby, soccer or cricket team had a permanent get out of jail free card and they could beat up anyone they liked, while anyone else was just there for target practise.
Anyway... The aforementioned teacher would throw the homos into detention just for glaring at him (”insolent poof”). In contrast, one of the school captains called him an ginger-bearded arse-bandit to his face, and he just laughed it off.
On the last day of school, a bunch of kids - the nerds, the geeks, the weeds and the gays - showed a little bit of solidarity, and hauled his Mini Cooper across the sports field and dumped it in the outdoor pool. Payback for years of him being so blatantly biased against anyone not good enough to kick a ball round the pitch and who didn’t have a six pack.
So instead of looking at who the “perpetual victims” are, perhaps the sensible thing to do would be to look at who the “perpetual oppressors” are and what motivates them.
Chances are, any thug who’s picking fights with weedy little poofs is probably picking fights with anyone else who’s not likely to put up much of a fight.
It could be that my sports teacher’s clear need to be hanging around with strapping, fit, muscle-clad teenage boys both inside school and out, while showing blatant animosity to anyone who didn’t have the Charles Atlas seal of approval, was just coincidence. But somehow, I doubt it. I bet he was a raging, frustrated closet case, a crafty butcher cursed to look but don’t touch, and the one thing he really hated more than anything else was them fags who were out and proud. I reckon that’s why he picked on them worst of all... envy.
A cop stopped me and asked what I was doing. I was a Realtor going to meet a client at a house.
The cop excorted me to the house...waited....and escorted me out of Town. Rochester, NY 1968
AND he called and chewed out my boss.
Ill be homeschooling just to keep these freaks away from my normal kids.
&&&
Good decision. (Retired teacher here.)
Pure BS. I’ve been gay all of my life, so far, and when I was in school or out in society, the only times I got punished was when I did something wrong, not because of who I was. Then again, maybe I was in the 60%. But I still believe it to be BS.
This study is meaningless. Imho, the researchers had an agenda and relied entirely on the responses of the participants for information. There may well have been an inclination by the participants to reply as they thought the researchers would approve.
Gee, wonder if she has an agenda?
You mean "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL" might be an intelligent policy, and keep you from getting beat up by the police?
Here we go again. More fake “research” to support victimology.
I can see a host of reasons why this might be true, and also why it might be a complete waste of time.
Like:
(1) Any teen that labels themselves as LBGT is a non-comnformist.
(2) Non-comformist have a habit or buking, railing against, and disobeying authority.
(3) Who is the most likely to get in trouble with school autorities? See #2.
In other words, the most likely reason these students get in more trouble at school is NOT that the schools is targeting them because they are LBGT, it is because the students don’t obey the school’s authorities in other ways.
LGBT people are much more likely to be drug-addicts, commit suicide, or engage in high-risk sexual antics.
It makes sense then as kids they would also be more disruptive and troublesome in class.
Statistics such as this are no more helpful than viewing the percentage of the prison population that is of a certain race. These statistics, even if accurate (a big IF here), are meaningless in relation to the entire population you are studying; they are only revelant in what they say about the sub-population, here teens who have self-identified as LGB.
If many more people of race A engage in crime, of course the majority of the prison population is going to be comprised of people of race A. Yes, there are variables. But the gross trends are inescapable.
Teen brains are immature in many ways across the board. This includes all aspects of their identity, including sexual identity. A teen who self-identifies a counter-culture sexual identity, especially at a young age, may do so for a variety of reasons and may be acting out more than (or not even) sexual aspects of his personality.
The LGB label is the perfect way for teens to act out general feelings of alienation and garner the perceived emotional rewards of victimhood. The LGB label also becomes a preferred explanation for all the ways in which a kid may feel socially unsuccessful.
At the other extreme, the LGB label is sought by some teens as a way to boost their "cool factor." Yes, far from being truly stigmatizing, kids see homosexuality exulted as the ultimate edgy stand for freedom, rebellion and even sexual sophistication (and all teens want to feel sophisticated).
Identity turmoil and perceived victimhood of all kinds go hand and hand with the gamut of acting out behaviors. So does the desire to be edgy, rebellious, in-your-face, and untouchable socially. (By the latter I mean that teens know very well that if they declare themselves LGB, a certain segment of society will be falling all over themselves to avoid offending them.)
When you act out as a teen, you often get punished.
Wolfgang (Artie Johnson) is significantly prettier. :)
Now just tell me how a police officer determining whether to make a traffic stop or not can tell that the driver is a queer!
And even if they did, the simple solution would be to take that “HEY, I’M A QUEER!” rainbow or = sign off your car, if you’re so worried about it.
Maybe they engage in more rule-breaking behavior than others? Was that possible factor included in the study?
NOT included.
All these “studies” are like this ...
Esp the crime statistic ones ...
The last couple of lawsuits I read about were street fights.
One was nearby. Such a farce. These fags provoke these fights.
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